How to Beat Anyone At Chess Read online

  A move in chess is generally defined as a move by White and Black’s reply. A single move by White or Black with no reply is usually called a half-move.

  BLACK ON TOP

  On a computer screen or in a book or magazine, the board is almost always set up so that the White pieces are on the bottom and the Black pieces are at the top. There is no particular reason for this other than tradition. You could just as easily have the Black pieces at the bottom and the White pieces at the top.

  The White pieces are set up along the first rank. The rooks begin at the outside corners, with the knights inside, the bishops next, and the king and queen in the middle. The White pawns line up on the second rank. The Black pieces begin on the eighth rank, and the Black pawns begin on the seventh rank. Kings are opposite each other on the e-file and queens are opposite each other on the d-file.

  WHERE’S THE KING?

  Kings start out on the e-file. Just remember King Edward, and you’ll never forget. The queens start out on the d-file. Queen Dolores will do. Also, remember that the queen always starts on her own color: The White queen starts out on d1, a light square, while the Black queen begins on d8, a dark square.

  Setting up a chessboard.

  The King

  Although there are six types of chessmen, the game of chess is really about the king. All other pieces and pawns are there as the king’s helpers or weapons. The twin objectives of a chess game are to trap the opposing king and to keep your own king free. This twin objective is probably what makes chess unique. Most other games are measured in accumulations of points or time or territory.

  THE STAUNTON DESIGN

  Chess pieces have been designed to look like all kinds of things. This is fine for collections and displays. But for practical play, a design is needed that is at once easily recognizable by anyone who plays and readily available. That is the Staunton design, named after its inventor, nineteenth-century Shakespearean scholar and chess master, Englishman Howard Staunton.

  POSSIBLE MOVES

  The chess king is not particularly strong or fast. He can move in any direction, along a rank, file, or diagonal, one square at a time. This may not sound very promising, but your monarch can have a lot of power late in the game when there are not too many other pieces around. He can have up to eight possible moves in the middle of the board, but only three possible moves from any corner.

  Nonetheless the king is extremely valuable: Get him trapped and you lose the game. Therefore, good players often begin by hiding their big guy in an inaccessible corner, while attacking with other pieces and pawns.

  CAPTURES

  Although the king never leaves the board during a chess game, he can capture other pieces. As long as the enemy piece is within range of the king (that means one square in any direction from where the king stands), he has the option of moving to the square occupied by the enemy piece and removing it from the board.

  The Rook

  The piece that looks like a tower is often incorrectly referred to as a castle by the uninitiated. But by any name, it is a powerful piece to have in your army, and a formidable enemy.

  The rook moves along empty ranks or files. Place it on a1 on an empty board and it has fourteen possible moves, anywhere along the a-file or the first rank. Place it on e4 and it can go in four different directions: left along the fourth rank, right along the fourth rank, up (toward your opponent) along the e-file, or down (toward you) along the e-file.

  The many possible squares the rook can move to give it a particularly rapid striking capacity. It is indeed a very similar piece to the chariot it was derived from. The rook started out as a chariot or a boat. It became a tower on a siege engine during the Middle Ages.

  CAPTURES

  The rook can capture any enemy piece (except the king) or pawn in its path. And although it is not possible to capture a king, if the enemy monarch should happen to be in the path of your rook, your opponent must drop everything else and remove the danger one way or another.

  A capture is carried out by moving the rook along the rank or file desired to the square where the enemy piece or pawn resides. Place your rook on that square and remove the enemy piece or pawn from the board.

  LONG RANGE

  Since the rook can swoop down the entire length or width of the board, it is referred to as a long-range piece. But this long-range capability is only good for rooks on an open board—that is, a board without a whole lot of obstacles in the way.

  At the start of the game, the rooks are sleeping. None of them have any possible moves, so their power is only a potential for later use. Without open files or ranks the rook is pretty useless, and can get in the way of the other pieces.

  OPEN FILES

  Open files are files that are free of pawns. Other pieces, both enemy and friendly, can be on the file, and it is still considered open as long as no pawns reside there. A half-open file is a file with at least one enemy pawn on it. Again, pieces of either color can clutter it up, as long as no enemy pawn is in the way.

  The Bishop

  The tall, thin piece starting out between the royal couple and the knight is an expanded version of the old alfil, or “elephant.” The bishop is another of the long-range pieces, and it operates on diagonals. So the bishop’s strength varies depending in part on what diagonal it stands on.

  A bishop on an empty board can move to any square diagonally forward or backward to either side of the square on which it stands. If a piece or pawn stands in the way, however, that’s where the bishop must stop. Like rooks, bishops never learned how to jump.

  SQUARE COLOR

  At the start of a chess game both opponents get two bishops: one dark-square bishop, which is confined to only dark squares for the duration of the game, and one light-square bishop, which is limited to the light squares only. Thus if your light-square bishop gets captured, you might conceivably become weak on the light squares. On the other hand, one of the best ways to begin an attack on the white squares is to remove your opponent’s light-square bishop.

  FROM ELEPHANT TO BISHOP

  The bishop was originally an elephant in the Indian version of chess. It didn’t get its modern powers until around the time of the Renaissance. The piece had been a symbol of the elephant’s tusks, and that symbol reminded the Italians of a bishop’s miter.

  CAPTURES

  The bishop can capture any piece (except the king) or pawn located on any of its diagonals, provided nothing else is in the way. Simply move the bishop along the desired diagonal, stop at the square the enemy piece or pawn occupies, and remove the offender from the board.

  The Queen

  The other half of your royal couple is the super-piece of chess. Each side gets only one to begin with, and that’s just as well—two would be awfully hard to deal with.

  The queen is essentially a rook/bishop combination. She is another long-range piece, like the rook and the bishop, but she combines the power of both. The queens can operate on an empty board along ranks or files, just like a rook, and also along diagonals, just like a bishop. Furthermore, she can operate like both bishops, since in between diagonal moves, she can move along a file or rank and change the color of her diagonal. This is a formidable power.

  CAPTURES

  The queen can capture just like any chess piece. Sight along the rank, file, or diagonal from where your queen stands, find the piece (excluding the king) or pawn you want to capture, and move the queen there, removing the enemy from the board. Provided nothing is in the way except empty squares, you have made a capture.

  TIPS ON USE

  The queen is so powerful that most beginning chess players want to bring her out right away to wreak havoc on the enemy position. But this is often a foolish strategy, since the very power of the queen can be turned against her. Any lesser piece or pawn (and in terms of power, by definition that’s all of them) can come out and threaten to capture your powerful queen. She will wind up running from one attacker after another while your opponent pours more and more lesser pieces into the fight. It’s generally better to hold off on bringing the queen into the attack until the way has been cleared. Then her true power can be unleashed.

  The Knight

  The peculiar children of chess, knights are shaped like a horse’s head and don’t behave like any of the other pieces. They do not move along ranks, files, or diagonals. They have a longer range than the king but are not truely long-range like the rook, bishop, or queen. Instead, the knight moves from one corner of any six-square rectangle to the opposite corner. Thus, the rectangular corner highway is what he uses. You will notice very quickly that a knight always winds up on a different color square from where he began his move. Thus in a way he is the bishop’s opposite.

  CAVALRY TO THE RESCUE

  Knights are the cavalry of chess. Although there are no men or horses involved, the jumping action of the rectangular corner leap is close enough to have given players that impression. Along with the king, rook, and pawn, the knight represents one of the original pieces of the earliest Indian and Persian version of chess.

  OTHER EXPLANATIONS

  The move of the knight is so strange that it takes some getting used to. It has also given rise to a wide variety of explanations. Many chess books introduce it as a piece that moves in an L shape: one square forward along a file, then two squares at a 90° angle along a rank; or two squares to the left along a rank, then one square backward along a file, etc.

  Another way of visualizing the knight’s move is to think of this piece as a jumper. And as soon as you start to use the knight during a game where many other pieces are in the way, you will see that this is very true. Regardless of whether the squares in the middle of the rectangle are empty or occupied by friendly or enemy pieces, the knight
can still make the jump.

  THE KNIGHT’S WHEEL

  Place a White knight in the center of the board; let’s say on d5. Look at all the rectangles that use d5 as one of their corners. Now place a Black pawn on all the opposite corners of those rectangles. You should wind up with a Black pawn on c7, e7, f6, f4, e3, c3, b4, and b6. That is the knight’s wheel, which is a great visualizing tool.

  The Black knight can move to any of the three dotted dark squares. The White knight can move to any of the eight dotted light squares.

  CAPTURES

  Like the other pieces, the knight captures the same way it moves. Spring out from the square the knight occupies, and choose the occupied rectangular corner that is your destination. Land the knight on that square, removing the enemy from the board. You have just completed a knight capture.

  Types of Pieces

  The five types of pieces can be divided up in several ways. One way is by function:

  King—trapper or trapped; the purpose of the game

  Queen, rook, bishop, and knight—helpers

  Another way is by types of move the pieces are capable of. In which case, there are:

  Queen, rook, and bishop—long-range

  King and knight—short-range

  Another way to divide up the pieces is by their strength:

  Major pieces—queen and rook

  Minor pieces—bishop and knight

  The pieces are assigned a numeric value reflecting their strength. This helps players determine during a game who has an advantage in “material” (the term that refers to captured pieces and pawns). Pawns are worth 1, knights and bishops are worth 3 (generally, though see Chapter 5 for more on piece power), rooks are worth 5, and queens are worth 9 (the king, since it can never be captured, isn’t given a numeric value).

  You’ll notice that the bishop is both a long-range and a minor piece. The reason is that, although its immediate power can be overwhelming, it can only handle half the squares on the chessboard during the life of any game.

  The Pawns

  These little peasants or foot soldiers are the plodders of chess. They move slowly, one square at a time, and only forward, never backward. In addition, there are many exceptions to the ways they move, making them the toughest guys to master, despite their admitted weakness. It hardly seems worthwhile to put the time and effort into learning the moves!

  But the pawn also represents upward mobility and democracy. The pawn is everyman, and each one has the chance to make a difference in the game, if only he survives long enough.

  ANY COLOR YOU LIKE

  The colors of the pieces can be whatever you like as long as there is clear contrast between the White and Black armies. They don’t even have to be white and black; beige and red or cedar and maple are two possible alternatives.

  BASIC MOVE

  The pawn’s basic move is simple enough. Any pawn (each player starts out with eight of them) has the ability to move forward one square along a file or to capture one square forward along a diagonal. The capture is carried out by moving the pawn from its current square to one diagonally forward, removing the enemy piece or pawn there, and taking its place on that square. Right there we have a break from the pattern of the pieces, which move and capture using the same move.

  INITIAL TWO-SQUARE ADVANCE

  The first time a pawn is used in a game he can move one square forward, as usual, or he can move two squares forward. Thereafter, the option is gone, whether or not it was used. Each pawn has this option whenever he is first moved, regardless of how many moves the game has undergone.

  Since the pawn moves forward on a file in this optional move, no capture is possible. The two-squares-forward-along-a-file option is thus there to speed up play, nothing more. (The other exceptions, promotion and en passant, are explained in Chapter 3.)

  CHAPTER 2

  The Object of the Game

  Now that you know the basic moves, it’s time to turn to the central question: What are you trying to do in chess?

  The answer lies with the king. The king is the whole game, and the object is to place your opponent’s king in a position in which he will be captured on the next move. However—and this is very important—every time the king is threatened with capture, he is warned, thus giving him a fighting chance to escape. This warning is called check. Winning the game is called checkmate.

  KING OF KINGS

  Like many chess terms, the word check comes from Persian. It’s derived from the Persian word shah, meaning “king.” This word is also the origin of the word “chess.”

  A check is a situation where the king would be in danger of being captured if that were allowed. Instead, the player whose king is in check must drop everything and find a way to get out of check. Any piece or pawn is subject to a similar situation, but no warning is required and the player can ignore the threat to his piece or pawn if he wishes or if he is inattentive.

  The Black king on g8 is in check from the White bishop on c4.

  It sometimes happens that neither player notices a check for several moves. When this is discovered, the players are required to retrace the moves until the king was first in check. It also sometimes happens (in the games of very inexperienced players) that both kings are in check. Such a situation is of course not allowed and the moves must be retraced to a point where only one king is in check.

  THREE WAYS OUT OF CHECK

  When your king is in check, you must find a way out. There are only three possible ways to get out of check. They are:

  Capture the attacker.

  Move the king.

  Block the attack.

  The first way is often the best way. By capturing the piece or pawn delivering the check you not only get out of check so the game can continue, you also remove something valuable to your opponent from the board. Killing two birds with one stone is always good strategy in a game you are trying to win.

  The Black king on e8 is in check from the White queen on h5. Get out of check by capturing the queen with the knight on f6.

  Black has successfully gotten out of check, picking up a queen in the process.

  The second way is the first thing inexperienced players think of, often the only thing. The king is in danger? Move him out of the way. But you must be careful to move the king to a safe square.

  The third way works only when your king is in check from a long-range piece with some squares in between the king and the attacking piece. You can block such a check by moving a friendly piece or pawn in the way of the attacker, thus cutting off its long-range power.

  The Black king on e8 is in check from the White queen on h5. Block the check by moving the g-pawn to g6.

  Black has successfully gotten out of check by blocking the dangerous e8–h5 diagonal with the g-pawn. Note that the g-pawn is now ready to capture the queen in the next move.

  SAYING CHECK